Today is the 163rd day of 2015. There are 202 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1667: A 15-year-old boy becomes the first to receive a blood transfusion when Jean-Baptiste Denys, physician of French King Louis XIV, treats his fever with lamb’s blood.

OTHER EVENTS

1691: Ahmed II succeeds Suleiman III as sultan of Turkey.

1798: French forces capture island of Malta.

1882: Anti-foreign riots break out in Alexandria, Egypt.

1900: Second German Naval Act is passed, calling for fleet of 38 battleships by 1920.

1901: Cuban Convention makes that nation virtually a protectorate of United States.

1917: King Constantine of Greece abdicates, making way for son Alexander.

1935: Paraguay and Bolivia sign a truce ending bloody three-year Chaco War. Paraguay gets most of the disputed Chaco region, while Bolivia gets a river port.

1937: Stalin’s purge of Russian generals begins.

1940: Japanese planes bomb Chungking, China, capital of the Nationalist movement.

1952: Nordic nationals are for the first time able to cross the borders between their countries without passports.

1964: Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and other anti-apartheid leaders are sentenced to life in prison in South Africa.

1967: Israel declares it will keep some of territory won from Egypt, Jordan and Syria in Six-Day War.

1976: A military coup in Uruguay overthrows civilian President Juan Bordaberry, beginning a nine-year dictatorship.

1987: Central African Republic’s former Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa is sentenced to death for murder, arbitrary arrest, and embezzlement of public funds.

1991: Boris Yeltsin is elected president of Russia.

1993: UN forces launch offensive against Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid.

1994: The ex-wife of US football star O J Simpson and one of her friends are found murdered. The trial consumes American media for months.

1997: The United States announces it will try to limit NATO expansion to Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, snubbing Slovenia and Romania.

1999: NATO troops flood into Kosovo and come face-to-face with Russian troops who seize the airport in Pristina in an unexpected move. The Russian foreign minister calls the Russian deployment a mistake.

2004: Iraq’s deputy foreign minister is gunned down on his way to work in the first assassination of a senior official since a new interim Government was announced.

2005: Palestinian authorities carry out their first executions since 2002, killing four convicted murderers by firing squad in a campaign meant to halt a growing wave of lawlessness.

2009: The UN Security Council imposes new sanctions on North Korea, toughening an arms embargo and authorising ship searches on the high seas in an attempt to thwart the reclusive nation’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

2010: Ethnic riots wrack southern Kyrgyzstan, forcing thousands of Uzbeks to flee as their homes are torched by roving mobs of Kyrgyz men. The interim Government begs Russia for troops to stop the violence, but the Kremlin offers only humanitarian assistance.

2011: Turkey’s ruling party surges to a third term in parliamentary elections, setting the stage for the rising regional power to pursue economic growth, assertive diplomacy and an overhaul of the military-era constitution.

2012: The US accuses Russia of escalating the Syrian conflict by sending attack helicopters to President Bashar Assad’s regime.

2013: Turkey’s Government offers a first concrete gesture aimed at ending nearly two weeks of street protests, proposing a referendum on a development project in Istanbul that triggered demonstrations that have become the biggest challenge to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 10-year tenure.

2014: Ukraine’s president rallies support for his plan to end fighting in the country’s east in phone calls with the Russian and German leaders.

–AP